LinkedIn Unveils the 2016 Next Wave List: Top Professionals 35 and
Under

These Next Wavers Are Making Companies Millions, Saving Companies
Millions and Creating New Million-Dollar Market Categories

October 11, 2016 08:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LinkedInCorporation (NYSE:LNKD), the world’s largest professional network on
the Internet, announced today the 2016 launch of the LinkedIn
Next Wave. The annual list is driven by exclusive LinkedIn data,
encompassing millions of member interactions combined with editorial
insights to name the top 120 professionals 35 and under — all of whom
are transforming their industries to make a lasting impact on today and
tomorrow’s business landscape.

As part of the LinkedIn List franchise celebrating the companies and the
people making an impact in the professional world, the Next Wave list
spotlights the top professionals who you may not know, but should. The
honorees who made the cut have demonstrated an invaluable impact on
business: working to make companies millions, save companies millions or
create new million-dollar market categories. Others are inventing
programs or organizations meant to enrich the lives of millions. They
come from a wide variety of backgrounds, although some common trends
emerge:

Next Wavers value a strong professional network. The Next Wave
honorees have 25 times more connections than the average
LinkedIn member, proving that a strong network is critical to success.

Move over, Ivies, and think twice about your MBA. Sixty-three
percent of the Next Wavers do not have an Ivy League education and 60
percent did not attend graduate school.

Artificial intelligence should be the next skill you add to your
resume. From Otto’s self-driving trucks to COSY’s retail robots
and Amazon’s Alexa, this year’s list is packed with artificial
intelligence. Even the job interview, something that has remained the
same for decades, is benefiting from machine learning and A.I. at Next
Waver Mark
Newman’s HireVue.

Earth-friendly business is key. Sustainabilityisthe
future of business. Whether it’s the plant-based burger that “bleeds”
from Impossible Foods, the sustainable protein source in crickets used
by Exo, or AeroFarms’ creation of a vertical farm that takes up less
than 1 percent of the land required of conventional growers,
professionals are making money saving the earth.

“LinkedIn has unique access to what is going on under the hood of the
professional world and through our Next Wave list, we are identifying
the leaders who are defining the future through their incredible and
innovative work,” says Daniel Roth, executive editor, LinkedIn. "This is
an exceptionally inspirational group and I'm going to be following all
of them; you should, too."

Highlights include:

Technology:
Don
Burnette, the co-founder of Otto, the self-driving truck
startup recently acquired by Uber, and seen as critical to the
company’s autonomous future.

Retail:
Jonas
Cleveland, the founder of a startup deploying robots inside
Walgreens, Home Depot and other retailers to check inventory nightly,
making a time-consuming process more efficient and accurate,
positively impacting retailers’ bottom line.

Social
Impact: Emily
Miller,a former Army engineer and co-founder of Rumi
Spice, an economic partnership focused on giving rural Afghan farmers
an alternative to the opiate trade by sourcing high-quality saffron.

Education:
Christopher
Gray incited the biggest Shark Tank fight to date over his app
Scholly, which connects students to millions of dollars’ worth of
scholarships.

Media:
Daniel
Lippman, the co-author of Politico Playbook, who catapulted
his career from college by copy editing top journalists. He’s now
charged with reinventing the site’s flagship newsletter for a younger
audience.

Marketing
& Social Media: Elias
Friedman, creator of The Dogist, with 2.2 million Instagram
followers, who helped inaugurate a new genre of lucrative dog
marketing, attracting big-name sponsors like Google, Uber and Purina.

Like all of the LinkedIn content efforts, the methodology is derived
from a combination of LinkedIn data and editorial insights. To narrow
down LinkedIn’s 450+ million member base to determine this list, we
examined millions of member interactions, such as which profiles were
most viewed by members in the same industry; social engagement
performance; and the frequency that candidates appeared in the news,
using Newsle data. We also applied an editorial lens and polled the 2015
Next Wavers as well as LinkedIn Influencers such as Hotel
Tonight CEO Sam Shank and CEO
of Crisis Text Line Nancy Lublin to vet and suggest professionals in
their industries making waves.

The complete LinkedIn Next Wave list, along with video interviews and
special features, can be found at https://lists.linkedin.com/2016/next-wave-top-professionals-35-and-under-20161011.
LinkedIn invites you to celebrate the honorees and their accomplishments
using the hashtag #LinkedInNextWave on social media. The next LinkedIn
List in the series, LinkedIn
Top Voices, will be unveiled later this year and will focus on the
best voices on LinkedIn — those who write, share and develop their
brands through insightful curation and creation.

About LinkedIn

LinkedIn connects the world’s professionals to make them more productive
and successful and transforms the way companies hire, market, and sell.
Our vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the
global workforce through the ongoing development of the world’s first
Economic Graph. LinkedIn has more than 450 million members and has
offices around the world.